Synology RT2600ac router is one of it’s latest router launched in 2017. it’s wifi speed is up to 2.53Gbps combined bandwidth. The RT2600ac is a powerful wireless router for homes and SME looking for a features like VPN, internet security and most importantly, file sharing capability. It supports the latest 802.11ac wave 2 standard which enables up to 800Mbps and 1733Mbps on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios respectively. If you are worried about redundancy issues, the RT2600ac has Dual WAN in load balancing mode or failover mode.
Hardware
It has a Dual core 1.7 Ghz CPU with 512MB of DDR Ram and for wifi antenna it’s using 4×4 MIMO Omni-directional high-gain dipole (2.4GHz / 5GHz). It also comes with 4 ports of RJ45 LAN with 1 WAN port or if you’re doing dual WAN mode, it’s 3 ports for LAN and 2 ports for WAN.
There’s 2 holes underneath the router to allow it to be mounted on the ceiling.
For storage expansion, there’s 1 USB 3.0 and 1 USB 2.0 and surprisingly Synology has included a SD card reader on a router.
There’s led indicators on the front of the router which is customizable.
There’s 2 useful buttons on the right side. The WPS button for connecting to the wireless network without sharing the password and the on/off button to off the wifi function without accessing the router management. and on the left side of the router there’s the eject button to safely remove the USB drive/SD card.
Software
Synology is well known for it’s NAS and it’s DiskStation Manager (DSM) interface. The interface for their router is similar and it’s called Synology Router Manager (SRM). Setting up the SRM is very easy. Just follow the quick installation guide and it’s ready to go. It has a wizard mode and just follow the simple instructions to set it up.
After setting it up for the first time this is the login page which is customizable in the settings.
I’m running on the latest SRM verion : SRM 1.1.4-6509 Update 3
On the top right corner you can see the current utilized speed of the router. the blue is upload and green is the download speed.
Earlier I mentioned that the led indicator can be schedule. You can find the settings on the Control Panel -> Device -> LED page.
Let’s check out the WIFI network configurations.
There’s this new feature called Smart Connect which will automatically choose the the best wifi signal depending on your distance to the router. This works seamlessly with your end devices. Don’t forget to create your own SSID and make sure to use WPA2 for better security.
If you always have guest coming to your home or office. There’s the guest network which can be customized to be valid from 1 hour to unlimited.
And if you’re really really concerned about network security you can choose to enable the MAC Filter . This only allows the specified MAC Address to connect to the network even if you have the WIFI password. This is MAC Filter works on the LAN cable too.
The Smart WAN is for load balancing and failover for the WAN network. If you have 2 separate WAN links you can utilized the LAN 1 to make it the Inactive or standby port.
One good feature is the QuickConnect function.
First of all register an account with synology and then enable quickconnect.
Using the quickconnect.to link to connect to your router anywhere without meddling with DDNS.
I was connecting to the quickconnect.to url to access the login page.
There are many more settings which I won’t go in-depth as it’s quite similar to any other routers.
Applications
Synology has their own app store which is called the Package Center.
There’s currently 8 applications that you can download. Installing the app is a breeze. Just click on Install and it will immediately start download the application and install on to your USB drive.
If you’re using the Cloud Station Server it will prompt you to format your hard drive EXT4 format which the router is able to do.
There is 3 method of using the Cloud Station, Download the software 
Synology has also included a companion app called DS router. it’s available on both android and iOS devices. It is an easy way to managed your router from your mobile. I find the UX is good and UI is easy to understand.
